Quibbles over delegations scuttle inter-Korean talks

AP, SEOUL

Wed, Jun 12, 2013 - Page 6

The Koreas’ first high-level talks in six years have been scrapped because of a stalemate over who will lead each delegation, South Korea said yesterday, a day before they were to begin.

The cancellation is a blow to tentative hopes that the rivals were about to improve ties following years of rising hostility.

North Korea said it wasn’t sending its officials to Seoul for the two-day meeting that was to begin today because the South had changed the head of its delegation, Kim Hyung-suk, a spokesman for Seoul’s Unification Ministry, told reporters in a briefing.

South Korea had originally wanted a minister-level meeting between the top officials for each country’s inter-Korean affairs agency, but Pyongyang would not commit to that. When Seoul told Pyongyang yesterday that it was sending a lower-level official than it had initially proposed in preparatory talks, North Korea said it would consider that a “provocation,” Kim said.

The cancellation of talks arises partly from misunderstandings that the sides have about who is equivalent to whom in power between their different political systems, said Koh Yu-hwan, an expert on North Korea at Dongguk University.

“The two sides are offended by each other now. The relations may again undergo a cooling-off period before negotiations for further talks resume,” he said.

The talks were set up in a painstaking 17-hour negotiating session on Sunday, but the rivals had set aside the question of who would lead each delegation.